For the past several years vendors, integrators, and industry commentators have been harping on "Digital Transformation". What the heck is this thing? Why does it need such a fancy name? We work a lot in oil and gas. "Digital transformation" as a phrase lands flat in our industry. It sounds buzzword-y. It's all buzzword-y. No one in the field gets it, and middle management thinks they already have it handled. That is the real problem. Oil and gas companies are "connected enough" to think they...

Oof... its been so busy since February that I have not made the time to download all the notes and new things from this year's ProveIt! Conference . The videos are definitely starting to be released so check out the Industry 4.0 YouTube channel for more. Our bronze presentation will be released soon here too. Geordie and team did a great job connecting some new devices into the conference digital infrastructure. Bigger and Better This year's ProveIt! conference was bigger and better than last...

Automation covers a LOT of ground. When someone is talking about automation they might be talking about that small machine over there on the plant floor, a large facility with thousands of sensors and outputs, a SCADA system with thousands of sites, or a software automation and visualization. It can be helpful to think of and describe parts of automation as layers in a stack. This stack ranges from the specific sensors and processes on the plant floor (Layer 0) all the way up to the business...